


Down passages we did not take

by ziparumpazoo



Category: Longmire Mysteries (books)
Genre: Canon - Book, F/M, Missing Scene, Post - A Serpent's Tooth, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-17 11:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziparumpazoo/pseuds/ziparumpazoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walt's always been a professional when it comes to shouldering blame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down passages we did not take

**Author's Note:**

> No reference to tv canon. Spoilers for all the book series.

"Don't do this again."

Her voice jarred me from the lull of road noise and the company of my own thoughts. I looked across to the passenger side of her unit to note the shadows under her eyes and thought again how springing her from the hospital this morning for the funeral might not have been the best of ideas after all.

She'd been asleep since we'd left Sheridan so I'd opted for taking the long way home - Durant by way of Powder Junction and other points of interest, of which they were few and far between this late in the evening. But seeing as we had neither a detachment, nor deputies to staff it with at the moment, I was making a concerted effort to increase the department's visibility in the area, especially given recent events.

That, and I didn't have the heart to disturb her once she'd gotten herself comfortable with her feet propped on a pile of notebooks and clipboards wedged against the dash, my jacket that I'd spread over her pulled up to her chin.

After three days of medical incarceration, she'd started to get restless. On the fourth, Vic had colorfully informed me that it was a good thing I still had her badge and gun pending DCI's investigation into the shooting or she'd have already broken her way out. I'd pleaded her case with Bloomfield, pointing out how she was probably just going to pull a Longmire and wander out AMA the moment his back was turned anyhow. It wasn't that hospitals were necessarily a bad place. I just didn't believe spending more time than absolutely required did anything to expedite the healing process. She'd wanted to pay her respects to Frymire's family, and I figured that was as good a place as any to start. Looking over at her now, I was starting to have second thoughts.

"Just don't fucking do it." Her voice was sharp and I could feel her watching me in the dark.

"Do what?"

"This wallowing in your guilt."

"I'm not wallowing." I wasn't. I just kept coming back to the list of things I should have done differently in this investigation, outcomes I would have changed. Deaths that might have been avoided.

Vic made a sound that started out as a snort but petered into a groan as she hiked herself back up to a sitting position in the passenger seat.

"Still sore?" I passed her the bottle of water I'd picked up at the gas station on the edge of Sheridan when I'd filled the truck.

"No shit. What gave it away?" She dug in the daypack she'd been leaning on for the bottle of painkillers. "These seats suck. The springs are all worn out. There's no cup holder, no armrest. I want a new unit." Her complaint was only half-hearted. We'd been having this discussion since I'd hired her but there just wasn’t ever the budget for it.

"We could've taken mine, but somebody punched a bunch of holes in the rad." The Bullet had been towed to Ray's and was still waiting for parts to be delivered. Vic's ten-year old unit had the warm, lived-in feeling I found both comfortable and comforting; it reminded me of her office with the stacks of legal pads and pens and criminal code binders all over the place. I didn't mind driving her truck because it reminded me I was thankful that she was still around to make it hers.

I was trying to keep the mood light. Obviously, I was failing. "I was expediting matters. If those dumbasses had paid attention the first time they tried to set up a roadblock, I wouldn't have had to plow their asses off the road." She took a couple of deep swallows from the water bottle, capped it, and tossed in on the bench seat between us.

"Well if they'd have paid attention, a lot of things that might have turned out different."

Vic turned to me, and those tarnished eyes flared. "Walt. Do. Not." Each word was its own sentence and each one was heavy with warning. "Just don't. It doesn't change the outcome. Frymire's still going to be dead. Double Tough's still got months of rehab ahead of him. What's done is done and you can't go back and change it." She turned back to stare out the front window, some of her fire dampened. "This is not all on you, so don't you dare make me watch you tear yourself apart over this again."

The tires whined on the grooved pavement and the last of the daylight slipped away. I looked over at her again expecting more, aware of what she'd been careful not to say, but she'd balled up my jacket and was using it as a pillow against the window.

Henry had pretty much told me the same thing the morning we'd gone searching for Bidarte's body.

He'd met me outside the hospital where I'd spent the night slouched in the hard visitor's chair in her room sometimes dozing, sometimes watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing. It was early, just as he'd promised, the sun had barely started to clear the horizon and our breath had hung between us in clouds as he'd handed over the Styrofoam takeout cup of coffee. We hadn't said much on the drive out as we'd worked our way through the bag of breakfast sandwiches Henry had picked up at the White Buffalo. It wasn't until we were picking our way through the sagebrush toward the creek and I was finally starting to feel like I wasn't sleepwalking my way through the motions that he asked how Vic was doing. As usual, when it came from the Bear, there was more to the simple question.

We were a couple mile from the highway and I could see the cavalcade of DCI vehicles off to the south. They looked like they were loading up the last of the evidence from the drilling site and I stopped to watch a couple emerge like a pair of slick black beetles from the cover of the anti-aircraft netting that Lockhart and company had been strung across the canyon. "She's going to be okay."

The Cheyenne Nation turned and I could feel him studying me. "And you?"

"I'm fine." The reply sounded a little too quick, even to my own ears. Henry waited. I studied the dust on my boots and thought about how he'd sat with me in those horrible purple waiting room chairs, both of us crusted with mud and soot and Vic's blood, encouraging the hospital staff to give us a wide berth. He hadn't said much then either, but his steady presence had been enough to keep me there and grounded, just as it had been when he'd sat with me at my daughter's hospital bedside in Philly. If there was anybody I could trust with this, it was Henry.

"She was pregnant." It came rushing out like a deflating balloon. Even though I'd spent half the night thinking about it, it was the first I'd said the words out loud and I felt myself shrinking as they left me.

It took him a moment. "Walt, I am sorry." I felt his hand on my shoulder, felt him squeeze, and I looked up and met his eyes. "I did not know."

I nodded. "Neither did I."

"Did she?" It was a simple question, but the one I'd kept coming back to all night.

I squinted past him to the shadows of the mountains in the distance and the pair of crows riding the thermals in between. "I don't know."

Henry dropped his hand and turned to follow my gaze. "Then I will ask you this: does it matter?"

"Of course it matters." I pushed off and strode past him, angry at the idea that it shouldn't. I didn't hear his footsteps behind me. I kept walking, burning frustration with every stride. I'd never known him to be insensitive and there was no reason for him to start now by implying that it hadn't. I slowed, then stopped and stood there, hands on my hips as I gulped in lungfulls of cold morning air tainted by the slight tang of burning hydrocarbons.

His voice was low and deep and carried on the breeze until it cut through the thrumming in my head. "Do you believe that knowing would have stopped her from going after you?"

I blew out a breath and looked at my boots, remembering how she'd stood on the running board of the semi-tractor and kissed me through the open window. I remembered her fire and brimstone vow should I not return. "No, I don't think it would have." Of that much, I was certain at least.

Henry always did have the knack for seeing the truth when I was too balled up to see it for myself. He caught up to me again and slowed to watch the crows circle. A third had joined their dance, and then a fourth. It looked like they'd found something worth celebrating.

"Then it does not matter." He turned and looked at me again. Waiting until he was sure he had my full attention. "Walt, these are not your sorrows to bear alone. Do not forget this."

My eyes cut away toward the hazy shadow of the mountains again and a chill that had nothing to do with the brisk October morning ran through me. I thought of Virgil and his prophecy, the one I'd been so sure had been about my grown daughter. I thought of the child that wouldn't be and wondered if maybe I hadn't been so wrong after all.

I checked my speed and eased my foot off the gas pedal until the needle dropped below sixty again. I brought my left hand up to twelve o'clock on the wheel and draped my right across the back of the seat and let the backs of my fingers brush her cheek.

"It's not on you either." She leaned against my hand and in the dim glow from the dash lights I could see the moisture collecting at the corner of her eyes. "After all, you saved me."

"Damn straight I did." Vic nodded fiercely and swiped at her cheeks. "And now you're stuck with me." I smiled and wondered what I'd done to get so lucky.

She was uncharacteristically quiet again for a while, staring out the window with that pensive look I'd seen her wearing a lot of lately, and then she shifted across the bench seat, closer to me. I let my arm fall across her shoulders and she leaned against me. I could see the lights of Durant on the horizon, so I slowed the truck a little more, stretching the moment out as long as I could.

"Hey, Vic?" I felt her breathing stall as she waited for what must be any number of inevitable questions. We hadn't talked about it after Bloomfield had broken the news to her because there was still too much fallout from investigation to hide behind. We'd talked around it; about what it was going to mean now that we'd lost nearly half the department, who should be assigned to the Powder Junction detachment and where we would could put them up until we had a new building to put them in. We'd talked a little bit about Chuck Frymire and how even when everything seemed to be going right for him with the fiancée and the new job, he'd still been a victim of circumstances and bad timing. We'd talked a lot about second chances and Double Tough's miraculous return to the land of the living, while steering well clear of any discussion about where she and I were going from here. We'd dissembled because there was still too much to process.

I looked down at her and tried to imagine how it would have turned out if she hadn't been there to push me out of the way of Bidarte's blade. I tried to picture her staying here in Wyoming by herself, raising a child on her own in a place she'd never wanted to move to in the first place. I knew she'd only stuck around because of the job at first, and me later on, and I couldn't picture her growing old on the high plains so far away from her family back east. Like my old television with the rabbit ears, the image just wouldn't stick.

"It doesn't matter." I swallowed around the tightness in my throat and the ache in my chest. "I'm glad you did. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Her elbow found my ribs, but it wasn't as hard or as sharp as I expected. "And you'd better not forget it, mister."

I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't.

**Author's Note:**

> Stylistically, this is a leap. I don't usually play in literary canon. Please be kind?


End file.
